Abbott's love affair with US 'hate group'

“Alliance Defending Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries. This is catholic, universal orthodoxy and it is desperately crucial for cultural renewal. Christians must strive to build glorious cultural cathedrals, rather than shanty tin sheds.” — Blackstone Legal Fellowship website, 2014

In January 2016 sacked former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott addressed a far-right Christian ‘hate group' in New York USA during the parliamentary break, on the subject of family values and marriage.

On 23 October this year the Courier Mail reported:

backbencher and staunch “no” advocate, Tony Abbott has made the decision to return to the US at the end of the month and once again address the Christian right-wing organisation, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Defined by the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLA) in the US as an anti-LGBTI hate group, the ADF not only supports the recriminalisation of homosexuality — in the US and overseas — but according to the SPLC website, it has also “defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to paedophilia and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity.”

Abbott states he’s “honoured” to be invited to speak to this group again…..

While his first trip to the US to speak to the ADF last year drew raised brows and concerns, this second trip is obviously timed to ensure Abbott will not only have whatever ammunition he needs to water down any consequent legislation arising out of a conscience vote on SSM, but also demonstrate his zealotry towards another cause that, post being PM and regardless of his party’s position, he’s made his own.

This second time around Abbott once again turned to family values and marriage, with the addition of the same-sex marriage postal survey currently underway.

Offering up gems such as these: 

“Romantic love alone can’t always sustain the life-long commitment and the shared sacrifice for the common good that’s at the heart of marriage. We will all lose, in the brave new world of same sex marriage, if commitment is watered down; and if fewer people marry, fewer couples have children, fewer relationships last, and fewer children have stable homes” 

and 

“Campaigns for same sex marriage and the like are a consequence of our civilizational self-doubt and the collapse of cultural self-confidence. The decline of belief has meant a reluctance to assert principles and a fear of giving offence. We find it hard to say “no” to gays who want to marry; just as we’re finding it hard to say “no” to Muslims who want several wives. We’re reluctant to let Christian parents take their children out of sex education classes; but once the local imam gets involved, I suspect, our cultural diffidence and our double standards might start to run the other way. Here in America, organisations like the Alliance Defending Freedom are a sign that Western civilisation still has its friends. The organisation in Australia, as yet largely informal, as yet basically ad hoc, as yet nameless, that has sprung into being to defend marriage shows that, in my country too, there remain embers of respect for our traditions.”